[WikiEN-l] Flagged Revisions

[Jay Litwyn]

"Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:b8ceeef70908230910h3466019cpcedf7ae0a2c0a98b at mail.gmail.com...
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 1:17 AM, Bod Notbod<bodnotbod at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'd really hate to go to [[curry]] and see recipes. The sorts of
>> spices that are often included yes. But not cooking times.
>>
>> If I look up [[engine]] I want to know how it functions. But I don't
>> want to see a tutorial on how to deal with specific problems.
>>
>> Although I suppose there's a possible claim of hypocrisy here. Many of
>> our medical articles include a section on treatment, which I guess is
>> a form of How To.
>>
>> And I just happened upon [[suicide methods]] which perhaps is the last
>> word, almost literally, on How To do something.
>
> I think the difference is between instructions with the expectation
> that someone would actually follow them, and simply understanding
> common practice.
>
> Curry recipe: you don't need precise cooking times, sequences etc to
> understand common practice.
> Engine: You don't need troubleshooting instructions to understand
> common practice.
> Disease: A description of treatment *is* appropriate to understand
> common practice.

I agree. Sometimes doctors do not hav time to describe exactly what they 
will do, because they're concentrating on minute details, like angiograms, 
and it is useful to hav a cursory description of a medical procedure, so 
patients can compare or deliver informed consent. Nobody will put a step by 
step process for a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commisurotomy into the 
encyclopedia.

> Suicide methods: It's a fine line, but there is probably information
> you can leave out without affecting the encyclopaedicness. For
> example, we could explain that people take certain kinds of pills
> without being too specific. We could mention that people jump off
> buildings without highlighting particular ones. Maybe.
>
> Steve
>
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